EoP - Difficult Games

Well I've decided to move the release schedule. From now on I'll be uploading new videos on Saturday instead of Monday. Granted I may go back on this later if I see a significant drop in views, but I doubt that will happen.

Anyway this episode of Elements of Play is about games that are not easy. I felt the script here was stretched a bit thin, and I sure I'll hear loads about what games I SHOULD have brought up. Regardless I hope that most of you enjoy what I'm trying to get across in this video.

----CP Out----

Arkham City

I'm still trying to catch up on last year's game releases, thus I've only just finished Arkham City. It’s a great game, and I can't stress how fun it is to play, but It feels watered down compared to Arkham asylum.

The overarching issue that I have with Arkham city is how it has too many brief appearances. Multiple enemies get only a tiny bit of screen time, and several are barely mentioned. One or two faces are around long enough to feel fleshed out, but that isn’t the case across the board. For me this made the villain experience less potent.

I don't really want to rant on, but suffice it to say there were too many villains fighting for screen time. In the end I didn’t' feel any one of them was a serious threat, and was left wishing for the more focused experience and quality of the original Arkham asylum.

I suppose it come with the territory though, the perils of trying to follow up a fantastic game.
----Strife Out----

P.S. If you guys want me to go into more detail I could make a video about the game. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Basically, kind-of a big deal

Valve (creators of half-life, team fortress, and left 4 dead) have been turning out interesting shorts for not only promotional purposes, but also for fun, for a long time now. Their most recognised work though are the "meet the team" videos for their free multiplayer game Team Fortress 2. Up until this week TF2 only had videos introducing eight of it's nine classes. Now though the final class "The Pyro" has his own video, which describes, in a hilariously violent way, why he loves fire so much.

I laughed my ass off while watching this.

More importantly though the Pyro video débuts how Valve as been making it's animated video, with the source film maker. The Source Film Maker is a literal realtime 3D movie maker built around Valve's Source engine. They've apparently been working on this piece of software for some eight years, and I must say it looks good.

People have been making movies with valve resources for some time now, but they've largely lacked proper animations because of how much work it is to animate bipeds. I'm very interested to see how this will potentially change the machinima landscape.

What are your opinions on the Source Film Maker?
----Strife Out----

P.S. Hopefully people will figure out how to move characters and worlds like Skyrim into this move maker and make some truly epic videos!

Dusk Maiden

This post may serve as a reminder, or maybe news to some of you, but I enjoy watching anime. This past week I finished watching the show Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, and I figured why not say a few words about it.

The show is about the ghost of a girl who haunts the local school, and no one can see her. This ghost is unable to remember her past and how she died, so she can't find peace but for the same reason she isn't vengeful either. One day a freshman wanders into the old school building and surprisingly can see her. Not long after meeting they decide to try and find out the girls past, and they start a club which also attracts two other members.

That's the brief synopsis, and while the show had potential I found it to be lacking. I watched the entire thing mainly because it was the only series I was following this past season, so I was patient with it's initial lack of story development. Something did have going for it though was beautiful artwork. The gaudy background images of the old school building where the characters held club meetings was impressive in my onion, which really helped to improve the show's quality. The overall story was ok, but as I said, it took some time to get going. A few episodes were unexpected and there were some decent twists; However, the ending was disappointing. The writers for some reason chose to shy away from a decisive conclusion, and ended up creating a last minute happy ending. I don’t' have a problem with "Happily Ever After", but when it's suddenly conjured out of thin air I always have complaints.

Start to finish Dusk Maiden of Amnesia was an ok show, and certainly not the worst anime I've ever watched. However, I won't be fondly looking back at it, assuming I even remember it.

----Strife Out----

EoP - Retro Appeal

Well here's the next episode of Elements of Play. This time around I cover the subject of retro style games made in the modern day. I think it a fairly interesting subject, but tell me what you think.

Also I'll try to post more stuff on the blog this week.

----Strife Out----

Steam Cut Ex

For those of you who play on the PC, and can run this game, Deus Ex Human Revolution is only $7.50 for the whole weekend on Steam!
If you haven't played this game yet now is a great opportunity to pick up one of the best titles released last year on the cheap!

I loved playing through the game, and I hope you do too!

----Strife Out----

EoP - The Next Gen

The subject can be explained in much better detail, but what I cover in the video is sufficient enough to get the point across. Also I'm troubled by how extreme the compression is from youtube for the video. There's a lot of detail missing which really helps to dive home how much difference tessellation can make.

I hope most of you have learned something from this vid.

----Strife Out----

The Survival Games

If any of you watch the exploits of the YogsCast you may know about this already. However, if you don't let me just say they're a group of people from across the pond (mostly two guys named simon and lewis), and they do lots of videos over MineCraft. This particular video puts eighteen YogsCasters against each other in a Hunger Games like competition.

I was laughing all the way through!

----Strife Out----

E.o.P. Cancelled

There's been a delay in the second season on Elements of Play for a good reason.
I'll expound uppon the subject latter this week in a video. However, I thought I should say something now. Especially since the nail is actually in the coffin on this.

====Update 6-12-12====

----Strife Out----

FF Tech

I've been up on the next generation of video game graphics for a while now. Being a PC gamer I've been able to play games with visual fidelity that console owners simply don't have access to. As a result I see less of a night and day difference when seeing techdemos, because most games I play have been edging forward and I've been there to see the inching improvment. This real-time demo from Square-Enix though proves just how much I can still be blown away.

Of everything that came out of E3 this year (keeping in mid I still haven't seen everything), this has to be the most impressive.

----Strife Out----

BFG

On the eve of E3 I'll just say that this older game that's being reworked for modern systems is one I'll probably buy. Sure I played Doom 3 back in the day, but i've never owned it, and I think it's a title worth having! How about you guys, are any of you thinking of picking up this classic?

----Strife Out----

All Is Revealed

If you missed it just yesterday (may 31) Bethesda published the trailer for the first Skyrim DLC, Dawnguard. I'm excited, disappointed, and not surprised at all. Obviously I'm ready for new DLC which is why I'm excited. However, since I don't play on the xbox, and the DLC is exclusive for a month, I'll have to wait, so I'm disappointed. Finally I'm not surprised because, if you've been listening to my podcasts on youtube, I predicted the major idea and direction behind the DLC as well as cross bows coming into play.
Despite all of this I'm still looking forward to Dawnguard, even if my predictions turn out to be TOO good.

----Strife Out----